I bought an inexpensive Timex HRM 3 or 4 years ago. It's worked fine up until this year. When I started riding again a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the readings were intermittent, in that some of the time they seemed right, but other times they seemed to be about 1/2 of what I would expect.

I replaced the batteries in both the chest band and in the wrist watch unit.

Now I can't seem to get the HRM part to work at all. I press the button to cause it to try to read from the HRM, it shows three dashes, then just goes back to the time display.

(I no longer have the manual for it.)

Any ideas?

The Answer

I replaced the strap once, then the watch band broke (and it's not replaceable). I put it in my broken watch box.

Are your contacts clean, and are you sure you're getting good contact with your skin? I periodically swab the contacts real good with rubbing alcohal and a q-tip. I put a fair amount of spit on the contacts before I put the strap around my chest. Just because a battery is new, doesn't mean it's a good battery. Maybe you got a bad one. Based on the trouble you describe, it sounds like the problem is on the strap and not the watch. Other than batteries, I've been using my Timex HRM problem free for about four years. Check that, I do occasionally lose signal when crossing under high powered radio antennas....but that's predictable and repeatable. Do you live under power lines or near a radio tower?